IDEAS & TRENDS: A Weapon for Consumers; The Boycott Returns

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: March 26, 2000

NOT since the 1970's, when grape workers and the anti-apartheid movement were holy causes for millions of Americans, have so many groups embraced the boycott as a weapon.

In the most prominent boycott in years, the N.A.A.C.P. has called on tourists and conventions to shun South Carolina to pressure that state to remove the Confederate flag atop its Capitol. Also facing an N.A.A.C.P. boycott, the Adam's Mark luxury hotel chain agreed last week to pay $8 million, seek minority customers and give its employees diversity training to get the boycott dropped and to settle race discrimination lawsuits brought by some offended black guests and the Justice Department.

Gay groups have proposed a boycott of Paramount over a planned television show starring Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who has called homosexuals ''biological errors'' and ''sexual deviants.'' Groups seeking to restore democracy to Burma are sponsoring boycotts against Best Western, Unocal, Suzuki and other companies that do business there. Among the companies that labor unions are boycotting is Kaiser Aluminum, which locked out 2,900 unionized workers 14 months ago. And the Southern Baptist Convention is pressing a boycott against Disney, charging that it is too sympathetic to gays.

''The times may be ripe for more consumer boycotts,'' said Jeff Faux, executive director of the Economic Policy Institute, a research group in Washington. ''We have more of a consumer culture, and people see themselves more as consumers today. While people are participating less in the political process, as consumers they see that one way they can exercise power is by where they spend their money and where they don't.''

The boycott takes its name from an economic war waged by Irish farmers in the 1880's against an English land agent, Charles Cunningham Boycott, who refused demands to cut rents during a time of poor crops. Their subsequent refusal to work his land or sell him goods forced him to return to England.

In the late 1880's American farmers were already shunning railroads charging exorbitant rates. In 1885 alone, American labor unions carried out 196 official boycotts.

One boycott that made a profound impression on 20th-century America was the Montgomery bus boycott, which came after Rosa Parks famously refused to sit in the back of the bus in 1955 because she was black. Since then civil rights activists have repeatedly embraced boycotts. Two months ago, the television networks agreed to increase minority hiring after the N.A.A.C.P. threatened a boycott, charging that few shows featured minority actors.

But sometimes boycotts, which require organization and consumer awareness, fail. Most Americans do not realize that the United Farm Workers' 1984 grape boycott remains in force. Begun when growers refused to sign new union contracts, it has largely failed because the union stopped promoting it when it failed to catch on. Union officials say it remains in effect because lifting the boycott would give a victory to the grape growers. In sharp contrast, the original boycott called by Cesar Chavez in 1967 persuaded millions of Americans to give up grapes and pressured California growers to recognize unionized workers and raise wages.

Boycotts can hurt the very people they intend to help. When anti-sweatshop groups threatened a boycott against apparel from Bangladesh in the mid-1990's because many factories employed child labor, the factories simply fired the children, pushing some into begging and prostitution. Anti-sweatshop groups now generally oppose boycotts.

The N.A.A.C.P.'s president, Kweisi Mfume, said his group never rushes into boycotts. ''This is a trigger you don't want to pull until all else has failed,'' he said. ''In the case of South Carolina, after 38 years of negotiating even the N.A.A.C.P. has a limit to its patience.'' As a result, the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce says, more than 100 conventions and other events have been canceled in the state, which has lost at least $18 million in tourist dollars.

BUT Howard Hunter Jr., the chamber's president, said the boycott might backfire because it has caused some lawmakers to dig in. ''One group of legislators,'' he said, ''has used the boycott very effectively for not taking action, saying: 'We're being blackmailed. If we succumb this time, what are they going to ask for next?' '' The business community, Mr. Hunter said, has been working to resolve the problem.

LOOKING for less controversial tools than a boycott to pressure Paramount to drop its ''Dr. Laura'' plans, gay groups have deluged the corporation with calls and e-mail. ''Paramount would never host a talk show where someone said such nasty things about blacks or Jews,'' said John Aravosis, who has organized the stopdrlaura.com Web site.

Companies react to boycotts with either compliance or defiance. After several groups boycotted Pepsi over its Burma ties, the company stopped doing business there. ''When customers and consumers contact us, we definitely listen,'' said David De Cecco, a Pepsi spokesman, who added that the company's action was consistent with American foreign policy.

But Unocal has reacted differently to a boycott over its investment in a natural gas consortium in Burma. ''We sympathize with the boycott's goals,'' said Michael Thatcher, a Unocal spokesman. ''We want to see democracy and economic improvement in Myanmar. We feel that the way we're doing it is much more likely to bear positive results than their way, which is to pull out and isolate the country.''

During the South Africa boycott, the apartheid regime made similar arguments, saying sanctions were hurting the nation's blacks in particular. But Archbishop Desmond Tutu rejected those arguments, saying: ''You get all sorts of people saying all sorts of things about sanctions: That they will hurt the people you are trying to help. Twiddle! It's baloney of the first order! Because you are speaking about people already suffering, and you are saying you are trying to find some way that is a nonviolent strategy for bringing about the change that everybody says they want.''

Photo: Cesar Chavez, right, with farm workers in 1973. (The New York Times)